Tag Archives: automation

internet of things

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Here’s a McKinsey report on the potential economic value of the internet of things – they say $3-11 trillion per year in 2025, or up to 11% of the world economy.

The digitization of machines, vehicles, and other elements of the physical world is a powerful idea. Even at this early stage, the IoT is starting to have a real impact by changing how goods are made and distributed, how products are serviced and refined, and how doctors and patients manage health and wellness. But capturing the full potential of IoT applications will require innovation in technologies and business models, as well as investment in new capabilities and talent. With policy actions to encourage interoperability, ensure security, and protect privacy and property rights, the Internet of Things can begin to reach its full potential—especially if leaders truly embrace data-driven decision making.

the Gartner hype cycle

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The Gartner hype cycle plots technologies on curve from emergence to “peak of inflated expectations” to the “trough of disillusionment” and finally arriving at the “plateau of productivity”. For example, in 2014, they had quantum computing in early emergence, the “internet of things” arriving at the peak of expectations, big data crashing into the trough, virtual reality beginning its assent to the plateau, and speech recognition arriving on the plateau.

getting started with Raspberry Pi

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The official Raspberry Pi magazine has a nice “getting started” article. And starting on page 58, they tell you how to simulate the solar system. This is how kids should learn about how real systems work, rather than just memorizing the arbitrary names of their bits and pieces. I’m counting down my 25 years to retirement when I might actually have some leisure time to play with this sort of thing.

jeep hacker

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Yes, hackers can really take over cars. Here’s a Wired article where it’s done on purpose.

Miller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch. The researchers say they’re working on perfecting their steering control—for now they can only hijack the wheel when the Jeep is in reverse. Their hack enables surveillance too: They can track a targeted Jeep’s GPS coordinates, measure its speed, and even drop pins on a map to trace its route.

All of this is possible only because Chrysler, like practically all carmakers, is doing its best to turn the modern automobile into a smartphone. Uconnect, an Internet-connected computer feature in hundreds of thousands of Fiat Chrysler cars, SUVs, and trucks, controls the vehicle’s entertainment and navigation, enables phone calls, and even offers a Wi-Fi hot spot. And thanks to one vulnerable element, which Miller and Valasek won’t identify until their Black Hat talk, Uconnect’s cellular connection also lets anyone who knows the car’s IP address gain access from anywhere in the country. “From an attacker’s perspective, it’s a super nice vulnerability,” Miller says.

From that entry point, Miller and Valasek’s attack pivots to an adjacent chip in the car’s head unit—the hardware for its entertainment system—silently rewriting the chip’s firmware to plant their code. That rewritten firmware is capable of sending commands through the car’s internal computer network, known as a CAN bus, to its physical components like the engine and wheels. Miller and Valasek say the attack on the entertainment system seems to work on any Chrysler vehicle with Uconnect from late 2013, all of 2014, and early 2015. They’ve only tested their full set of physical hacks, including ones targeting transmission and braking systems, on a Jeep Cherokee, though they believe that most of their attacks could be tweaked to work on any Chrysler vehicle with the vulnerable Uconnect head unit. They have yet to try remotely hacking into other makes and models of cars.

“rebooting” cars

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Here’s a long article on some projects to integrate smart phone-like technology into cars. Basically, either you plug in an actual smart phone, or your car itself gets software updates. The former makes more sense to me, because why would you want to invest in technology that is trapped inside a car, when you don’t want to be trapped inside a car any more than absolutely necessary?

I’ve also been thinking for a long time about the contrast between innovative, nimble companies in Silicon Valley vs. the old-guard Detroit auto companies. I’ve wondered if the auto companies would evolve to be more like the tech companies, find ways to team with them effectively, or just fade away and be replaced by them. I see the third option looking closest to reality. I don’t believe cars are the technology of the future (at least, not one of the dominant technologies), but even when we do see car companies integrating technology effectively, it is not the old-guard Detroit companies doing it. I wonder if they will fade away or go out with a bang. Remember, during the financial crisis they survived only with a government bailout, and that happened because they made a decent case of their importance to the larger economy. Will they be able to make that case next time if our transportation system has evolved to use a wider range of technologies produced by a wider range of companies?

 

May 2015 in Review

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Negative stories:

  • MIT says there is a critical long term decline in U.S. research and development spending, while spending is increasing in many other parts of the world.
  • Lake Mead, water supply for Las Vegas and several other major western U.S. cities, is continuing to dry up. The normal snowpack in Washington State is almost completely absent, while much of Oregon has declared a state of emergency. As the drought grinds on, recycled water (sometimes derided as “toilet to tap”) is becoming more common in Calfornia. This is not bad in itself – on the contrary it is an example of technological adaptation and closing the loop. It does have a cost in money and energy though, which are resources that are then not available for other things like education or infrastructure or whatever people need. In other words, drought makes us all a little bit poorer.
  • We’ve hit 400 ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not just some places sometimes but pretty much everywhere, all the time.
  • There may be a “global shortage of aggregate demand“, and most countries are not dealing with it well. In many developed countries, increases in average longevity could lead to a trend of long-term deflation. This could eventually happen in almost all countries.
  • Climate change is going to make extreme weather more frequent and more damaging in U.S. cities. The 2015 El Nino could break records.
  • There just isn’t a lot of positivity or hope for better passenger rail service in the U.S.
  • Human chemical use to combat diseases, bugs, and weeds is causing the diseases, bugs and weeds to evolve fast.
  • Unfortunately there is no foolproof formula to make education work.

Positive stories:

  • Less leisure time could mean less sustainable outcomes, because people just have less time to think and act on their good intentions. I’m putting this in the positive column because although people in the U.S. and many other countries still work long hours, the trend so far is less work and more wealth for human population as a whole over very long periods of time. Obviously the transition is not smooth or painless for all workers all of the time.
  • I found a nice example of meta-analysis, which aggregates findings of a large number of scientific and not-so-scientific studies in a useful form, in this case in the urban planning field.
  • May is time to pull on the urban gardening gloves.
  • Melbourne’s climate change adaptation plan focuses on green open space and urban tree canopy.
  • Painless vaccines may be on the way.
  • The rhetoric on renewable energy is really changing as it starts to seriously challenge fossil fuels on economic grounds. Following the Fukushima disaster, when all Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down, the gap was made up largely with liquid natural gas and with almost no disruption of consumer service. But renewables also grew explosively. Some are suggesting Saudi Arabia is supporting lower oil prices in part to stay competitive with renewables. Wind and solar capacity are growing quickly in many parts of the world. Lester Brown says the tide has turned and renewables are now unstoppable.
  • Commercial autonomous trucks are here.
  • The UK may have hit “peak car“.
  • Seattle is allowing developers to provide car share memberships and transit passes in lieu of parking spaces.

robots

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Here’s a robot learning some tasks on its own. It’s interesting that my two year old human child is roughly around this same stage – he has thoroughly mastered a couple of these tasks, like putting a ring on a stick or a peg in a hole. He is still getting the hang of others, like sticking together legos and screwing on a lid. He has other skills though that I doubt the robot has, like making fart jokes and flirting with pretty girls (which sometimes go together at this age).

new grocery delivery services

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This article is about some new subscription-based grocery delivery services. This could make it even easier to live in car-free walkable communities for those who want to do that. You can shop for fresh food at a market when you want to do that, but have a steady stream of basic staples delivered on a reliable basis. Combine this with smart appliances – meaning your refrigerator and cabinets know what is in them – and you should never have to run out for an item in the middle of the night again. The only possible concern I have is whether this will push us even more towards processed, packaged food.